ASEEM INAM

Aseem Inam is Professor and Chair in Urban Design at Cardiff University and Director of TRULAB: Laboratory for Designing Urban Transformation, a pioneering research-based practice. He is an urbanist and activist-scholar-practitioner who is designing urban transformation at the exciting intersection of urban theory and design practice. Urban transformation means three things. First and foremost, it is fundamental change that leads to significant improvement in people’s lives. Second, it is a series of radical shifts in urbanism, which consists of city-design-and-building processes and their spatial products. Third, it is revolutionizing the field of urbanism itself to become transformative design practice.

He developed this unique approach through “research as practice,” in which a profound understanding of how cities work actually leads to new modes of urban practice.

Previously, Aseem worked professionally as an architect, urban designer and city planner in France, Canada, Greece, Haiti, India, Morocco and the United States. As an urbanist with the award-winning firm Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists, he led the team for redesigning the historic core of Whittier, California and for designing a new city in Sunland Park on the U.S.-Mexico border. He was a member of the international team invited by the Government of Haiti to develop a strategic framework for housing rebuilding following the 2010 earthquake in Port au Prince. He worked with Joseph Stein to develop the programming, design and construction of the ecological campus of the renown India Habitat Centre, a complex of public, private and non-profit organizations working on issues of housing and infrastructure. Early in his career, he was recruited by the Geneva-based Aga Khan Development Network to conceive, operationalize and lead a pioneering rural habitat development program in India, which has now benefitted over 80,000 residents.

In addition to research and practice, he has also dedicated part of his life to teaching in order to generate new knowledge and create generational shifts in critical thinking and urban practice.